How to display images using handlebars in Node.js ?

Last Updated : 09 Apr, 2021

In this article, we will discuss how to display images using handlebars in Node.js. You may refer to this article for setting up handlebars View Engine in Node.js.

We will use the following steps to achieve our target:

Install express and express-handlebars
Set up our express server
Create a basic Handlebars’ folder structure
Define proper routes

Install express and express-handlebars:

npm install --save express express-handlebars

Setting up express server:

Javascript

//importing modules 
import express from "express"
import path from "path"
import exphbs from "express-handlebars"
  
// Express server's instance 
const app = express(); 
  
const PORT = process.env.PORT || 3000; 
  
// listening 
app.listen(PORT, () => console.log(`Server started running on PORT ${PORT}`));

Create basic folder structure as follows:

Folder Structure

Change the default view engine to handlebars: To serve static files like images from a directory named “images”

app.engine("handlebars", exphbs({ defaultLayout: "main" }));
app.set("view engine", "handlebars");
app.use(express.static("images"));

With the above line we are telling our Node.js app where our images will be stored. We will not have to specify a messy path to our image in our <img> tag.

Define routes and render views accordingly:

Javascript

// Route to display static src images 
app.get("/static", (req, res) => { 
    res.render("static"); 
}); 
  
// Route to display dynamic src images 
app.get("/dynamic", (req, res) => { 
    imageList = []; 
    imageList.push({ src: "icons/flask.png", name: "flask" }); 
    imageList.push({ src: "icons/javascript.png", name: "javascript" }); 
    imageList.push({ src: "icons/react.png", name: "react" }); 
    res.render("dynamic", { imageList: imageList }); 
});

Handlebar templates: Now let us create a static.handlebars file in our views directory with the following content:

HTML

<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html lang="en"> 
  <head> 
      <title>Handlebars Images Demo</title> 
  </head> 
  <body> 
      <h1>Display Static Images Using Handlebars In NodeJS</h1> 
  <br> 
      <img src="images/gfg.png" alt="" style="border: 5px inset black;"> 
  </body> 
<html>

index.js

//importing modules 
import express from "express"
import path from "path"
import exphbs from "express-handlebars"
  
// Express server's instance 
const app = express(); 
  
const PORT = process.env.PORT || 3000; 
  
app.engine("handlebars", exphbs({ defaultLayout: "main" })); 
app.set("view engine", "handlebars"); 
  
app.use(express.static("images")); 
  
// Route to display static src images 
app.get("/static", (req, res) => { 
    res.render("static"); 
}); 
  
// Route to display dynamic src images 
app.get("/dynamic", (req, res) => { 
    imageList = []; 
    imageList.push({ src: "icons/flask.png", name: "flask" }); 
    imageList.push({ src: "icons/javascript.png", name: "javascript" }); 
    imageList.push({ src: "icons/react.png", name: "react" }); 
    res.render("dynamic", { imageList: imageList }); 
}) 
  
// Listening 
app.listen(PORT, () => console.log(`Server started running on PORT ${PORT}`));

node index.js

Output: Now, go to localhost:3000/static which will render GFG logo on the webpage.

Static img src display

Now let us create a dynamic.handlebars file in our views directory with the following content:

Javascript

<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html lang="en"> 
  <head>   
     <title>Handlebars Images Demo</title> 
  </head> 
  <body> 
  <h1>Display Dynamic Images Using Handlebars In NodeJS</h1> <br> 
  <div class="row"> 
  {{#each imageList}} 
  <div class="col-md-4"> 
      <div class="text-success" style="font-size: large; 
            font-weight: 700;">{{this.name}}</div> 
         <img src="{{this.src}}"> 
      </div> 
      {{/each}} 
  </div> 
  </body> 
<html>